“Do you mind telling me,” she continued, still imperturbably, “how you came to know anything about it?”

Maddox stiffened.  “I am Mr. Rickman’s oldest and most intimate friend, and he has done me the honour to make me his literary executor.”

“Did he also give you leave to settle his affairs beforehand?”

Maddox shrugged his shoulders by way of a reply.

“If he did not,” said Lucia, “there’s nothing more to be said.”

“Pardon me, there is a great deal more to be said.  I don’t know whether you have any personal reason for objecting—­”

She coloured and was silent.

“If it’s pride, I should have thought most women would have been prouder—­” (A look from Lucia warned him that he would do well to refrain from thinking.) “Oh, well, for all I know you might have fifty good reasons.  The question is, are you justified in sacrificing a work of genius to any mere personal feeling?”

He had her there, and she knew it.  She was silently considering the question.  Three years ago she would have had no personal feeling in the matter beyond pride in the simple dedication.  Now that personal feeling had come in and had concentrated itself upon that work of genius, and made it a thing so sacred and so dear to her, she shrank with horror from the vision of publicity.  Besides, it was all of Keith Rickman that was left to her.  His other works were everybody’s property; therefore she clung the more desperately to that one which, as he had said, belonged to nobody but her.  And Mr. Maddox had no right to question her.  Instead of answering him she moved her chair a little farther from him and from the light.

Now Maddox had the coldness as well as the passion of the Celt.  He was not touched by Lucia’s beauty, nor yet by the signs of illness or fatigue manifest in her face and all her movements.  Her manner irritated him; it seemed the feminine counterpart of her cousin’s insufferable apathy.  He felt helpless before her immobility.  But he meant to carry his point—­by brute force if necessary.

But not yet.  “I’m not asking you to give up a mere copy of verses.  The Sonnets are unique—­even for Rickman; and for one solitary lady to insist on suppressing them—­well, you know, it’s a large order.”

This time she indeed showed some signs of animation.  “How do you know they are unique?  Did he show you them?”

“No, he did not.  I found them among his papers when he was in hospital.”

“In hospital?” She sat up and looked at him steadily and without emotion.

“Yes; I had to overhaul his things—­we thought he was dying—­and the Sonnets—­”

“Never mind the Sonnets now, please.  Tell me about his illness.  What was it?”

Again that air of imperious proprietorship!  “Enteric,” he said bluntly, “and some other things.”

“Where was he before they took him to the hospital?”

“He was—­if you want to know—­in a garret in a back street off Tottenham Court Road.”